Cynthia Wilson at the Cliffwalk, Newport, RI, July 2010. Photo by Melissa Martin Ellis, whom she couldn't wait to meet. The pair hit it off right away.

X

A very good friend of mine, Cynthia Wilson—who wrote under the name C.L. Ross—passed away suddenly on Friday, December 10, 2010. I know that many of you on this list knew her or were familiar with her work.

Cynthia was working on a paranormal thriller series called The Llewellyn Legacy which was set in Ireland, a country she loved very much. She was thrilled to be returning to Ireland this coming February to complete the draft, and while there, she was going to be doing some paranormal investigating with her friends Mick Doyle and Ruth Deery of the Killarney Paranormal Society, of which she was a member.

She had, in the past year, built a website and invited several people to contribute to her blog on paranormal topics ranging from witchcraft to druidism to ghost stories. She was a proud member of the online pagan community WitchVox, for which she wrote many articles over the years; in addition, she had some of her short stories published in magazines and was actively working on polishing others to submit. And she had just recently discovered Twitter and was having a ball with it.

She held an MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College, which she had been awarded in January, 2010. Goddard is where Cynthia and I met. And we helped throw the best damn graduation party for the graduating class of January 2009 EVER…I’ll never forget us trekking all over Barre, Vermont to shop in the middle of the most brutal snow. It was me (a New Englander) and Julia (a Chicagoite)—but Cynthia the Southerner was driving the truck. Hilarious.

I decided that I would post links to where her work is available online, and also a link to her website, which for now is still up. She had just purchased the domain this year and I’m hoping against hope her password is someplace—or I can find it, because she gave it to me once but I don’t know if I kept it—so that I can renew her domain every year indefinitely. If anyone else knows where her work might have been posted, please let me know—I wanted to give everyone a chance to read what have turned out to be her last words.

X

“Sunshine and Stones”

Read Short Fiction

March 28, 2010

http://www.readshortfiction.com/2010/03/sunshine-and-stones-by-cynthia-wilson/

X

“Breathing Room”

Voices from the Garage

Spring 2010

http://voicesfromthegarage.com/story/breathing-room

X

“The Eulogy”

The Smoking Poet-Cigar Lounge

Summer 2010

http://thesmokingpoet.tripod.com/summer2010/id7.html

X

“Fixin’ the Blues” (poem)

SWAMP

Issue #2, October 4, 2008

http://www.swampwriting.com/?page_id=31

X

“Purgatory” (poem)

SWAMP

Issue #2, October 4, 2008

http://www.swampwriting.com/?page_id=38

X

“Murder in Frogtown” (poem)

Aquila Review

Fall 2008

http://www.tamut.edu/aquila/Text%20Files/Aquila%20Review%20Fall%202008%20(Second%20Version).pdf

(this also contains the first publication of her poem “Fixin’ the Blues”—SWAMP had retained it as a reprint)

X

“Rebellious Bat” (prose poem)

The Pitkin Review

Fall 2007

http://web.goddard.edu/pitkin/archive/2007_fall/RebelliousBat.htm

X

Cynthia’s C.L. Ross Website and Blog: includes many guest posts about the paranormal, witchcraft, Druidism, and legends; some of her otherwise unpublished short stories; and snippets of The Llewellyn Legacy.

www.clross.net

There are a couple of her pieces available in expired print magazines; I just found one that I’m going to order and see if her work is in it. I’ll keep you posted.

If you wish to visit the “In Memory Page” her friends have set up on Facebook, you can do that here:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/In-Memory-of-Cynthia-Wilson/